THE SCENE: In the 9th century, a religious disagreement gripped the Byzantine empire: should images of sacred Christian figures be permitted, or did they violate the Second Commandment? The passage below demonstrates that passions – and risks – ran high for those embroiled in the controversy.
THE TEXT: Then the holy and sacred objects were thrown into the marketplace by sacrilegious hands and treated abominably. Then the prisons which were intended to hold evil-doers were filled with those who honoured the sacred pictures: monks, bishops, layfolk, and icon-painters. Full too thenw were the mountains and caves; full of those who were being put to death by hunger and thirst, as though they were evil-doers. For the emperor decreed that the cities by out of bounds to the monks; he ordered them to be kept at a distance by all available means. They should not even dare to show themselves in the countryside. By these means he transformed the monasteries and places of retreat into glorious tombs, for the holy men were unwilling to betray virtue and their sacred habit, preferring rather to lose their lives by hunger and affliction.
[…]
In his hatred of the godly icons, the tyrant forced every likeness-painter either to quit the society of men or, if he chose to live, to spit on the icons and to tread them under foot on the ground, as an abomination. Lazaros the monk was arrested along with the others; in those days, he was a celebrated practitioner of the art of the likeness-painter. The enemy of God first tried flattery to bring him into line but, perceiving him to be beyond the reach of any kind of fawning, he resorted to violence, his natural ally. He tortured him so severely that it was thought unlikely that he would survive. Grievously broken in body, he was confined in a prison. When [the emperor] learned, however, that he was no sooner restored to health than he started setting up the sacred pictures again, he ordered iron plates to be heated in the coals and to be applied to the palms of his hands.
The fire devoured his flesh to the point at which the athlete lost consciousness and lay half-dead. But the grace of God must have determined that he survive to be a spark [to ignite] those who would come after. For when the tyrant learnt that this saintly man was at his last breath, bowing to the entreaties of the empress and of others close to him, he released him from prison and concealed him in the church of the Forerunner known as Phoberos. There, in spite of his wounds, the man painted an icon of [John the Baptist]. It was kept there fore a long time and it accomplished healings.
– John Skylitzes, Synopsis of Histories, 11th Century AD
